bar mitzvah: families versus the community

[cellio]

We have a large congregation, so there is a bar or bat mitzvah almost every Saturday morning. These are held at services that are attended primarily by the families and friends, not by a consistent community. The regular Shabbat community comes Friday nights and, for some, to the other minyan on Saturday morning. Things have been this way from time immemorial, or so I'm told. This isn't the way a bar mitzvah is supposed to work in theory; it's supposed to be about the kid taking his place in the community. But our situation is pretty common, unfortunately.

But we're a large congregation, and sometimes there are more 13-year-olds than available Saturday mornings, and rather than double up on kids they'll occasionally stick a bar or bat mitzvah on a Friday night. (Ours, like most Reform congregations, reads some torah on Friday night, so this is plausible.) But the families, for the most part, don't seem to understand that they are modifying an established service with an established community, and they are not entitled to make it fully "about them" the way they can on Saturday mornings.

So we get grumpy family members who are upset because they didn't get seven aliyot to hand out to all the cousins, and we get kids who spend more time thanking their family and friends than speaking words of torah, and we get parents who go on at length with the "parental greeting" that is really only about the family, and the community gets shoved aside. (Even though they cut other stuff from the service to make room, one of these will run 20-30 minutes longer than a regular Friday service.) I know many people who just do not come on Friday nights when there is a bar or bat mitzvah. I've been tempted, but I don't really want to flee and provide that little bit of extra evidence that "the community doesn't come anyway so we can get away with this".

I want to talk to our rabbis, because I want to see this change, but I have to figure out how to approach them. I would like to see a Friday-night bar/bat mitzvah be treated as a privilege, an honor, a reward. I would like to see the future confirmands of the year on Friday nights, not the kids who've publicly said they're ditching Judaism as soon as the party is over. I would like to see the families work within the structure of the existing Friday-night service and make it less about their kids. (I think there's corrolation here; a kid who's going to stick with things and is mature enough to realize he's part of a community is more likely to want to function in that community.) It'll take years, but I would like the typical family's view of the Friday-night assignment to shift from "booby prize" to "special honor". (And just once, when families are going on about themselves, I'd like to see someone thank the congregation for their patience.)

If this could work, then maybe, in a decade or two, we'll even see the Saturday-morning bar mitzvah shift in focus from the family to the community. Wouldn't that be grand? Heck, the first time one of our kids says he wants to do his bar mitzvah at the established informal service rather than a special family service, I'll be thrilled. (We had someone recently who, in retrospect, could have done that, if anyone had thought of it in time.)

I wonder how we can get there.

Comments

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I think how Friday vs. Saturday services are handled isn't a standard thing from synagogue to synagogue.

First of all, I never had a problem with the aliyot on a bar/bat mitzvah night being all family members of the child or children being honored. In the synagogue where I grew up that was the norm. The only cases where kids shared a bar/bat mitzvah was when they were twins. Nobody expected to be an aliyah on a night or afternoon when a kid was being bar or bat mitzvahed.

I never understood how they determined how many aliyot there were per torah portion. Our family never had the "not enough aliyot to go around" problem. At my bat mitzvah they came out okay, but at my brother's there was one more, only we didn't have enough male Jewish relatives to go around, so I wound up being the first female aliyah at a bar mitzvah other than her own (one of the twins was male, one female) at our synagogue.

As for when the ceremony is held, mine was on a Friday night. My synagogue wasn't in the practice of having services during the summer, but because my father was a substantial contributor to the synagogue, they made an exception and extended the services into the first weekend in July just for me. They had a Friday service, but no Saturday service. Until a year or two after mine, unless there were extra bar or bat mitzvah candidates, we often didn't have Saturday services, period.

At the end of the service, the family was expected to have an oneg at which the entire congregation was invited to partake -- and did. This was the way the community was most involved. If you wanted a private reception, you did it off-site Saturday afternoon.

More recently one of my cousins did share his bar mitzvah with a girl at his synagogue. I found it interesting the way everything was divvied up. The aliyot from both families were doubled up. Instead of one family member coming up each time, two would come up. The family members alternated between the two families. My cousin did the Torah reading, and the girl did the Haftorah (I think my cousin got the better deal :-) ).

Afterwards, there was an oneg at the back of the synagogue sponsored by both sets of parents for the entire synagogue, followed by private receptions off-site for each family.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

I hate to be a cynic, but you know and I know that the guilty sneaking-away families of bar/bat mitzvahs are the economic backbone of the modern synagogue... and they want to get to have their "show" the way they want it.

Congregations know this too. If you can believe it, a recent bar mitzvah family was quite behind on their dues -- with the obvious implication being that they would bolt once the service was over -- so the finance committee decided to bolt the door on the event (except for the kid's Haftarah) until they paid up. Using a kid as a pawn in a dues dispute. Yeah, we're really going to get a great rep for ourselves that way!

Anyway, the truth is that this is never going to change, at your synagogue or mine, as long as the point I made in the first paragraph is the reality. I would avoid going to the bar mitzvahs altogether if a) I didn't have to be there running the stage management, and b) the Mrs. wasn't induced to come by all the free food...

Really, I would stay home if I could. You're noble to want to avoid doing that but this is something that I don't think will ever change.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Does the rabbi have much say in these bar/bat mitzvahs? Does he feel it's an issue as strongly as you do? Or does the ritual committee have influence?

My cousin's bar mitzvah a couple of months ago was shared with another teen, and they split the responsibilities very well. He read some Torah, she read some (this was facilitated by the synagogue's practice of calling up large numbers of people for a given aliyah, so there was a "his family" aliyah and a "her family" aliyah). They split the haftorah, too, I think. His family opened the ark the first time, hers the second. Each gave a speech, which was answered by the rabbi. Interestingly, though they thanked people, that was low-key, not the point of the speech at all. They led a bit of the service, but it was a whole congregation involved sort of situation.

I remember having to come up with my speech, figuring out what I wanted to say about the Haftorah. There were the traditional thankings of parents and teachers, but mostly in a generic sense. I lead services, but it was the regular services. No one would've thought to ask to take some stuff out or add extra stuff in, other than the two speeches (me, the rabbi).

What options are the families given when they go to set up a bar/bat mitzvah? Can it be changed so that things are more welcoming to everyone? (And I'm shocked, btw, that the congregation wouldn't be invited to the oneg after.)

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

First, I'm surprised they move an overlapping B'nei Mitzvah to Friday night. Most congregation's I've seen do a Saturday afternoon B'nei Mitzvah as the 2^nd timeslot, with Erev Shabbat as a 3^rd backup.

I also note the alternate Saturday morning minyan. In the congregation we have just joined (http://www.tbhla.org/), they do an early Saturday morning minyan (I think 9:00 -10:30 ), with the B'nei Mitzvah service starting a little later (11:00 ).

As for how to move away from the commercialism and spectacle: I have no idea. I agree it is far too common (and did you see the article on the mock mitzvah: i.e., "bar mitzvah" parties for those who aren't Jewish and just want the ritual party). I wonder if at some point in the future, the "mock mitzvah" and the quinceanera parties will merge in the non-Jewish community?